


i thought of you and where you'd gone

by runphoebe



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Depression, Drug Addiction, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Overdosing, Recreational Drinking, Recreational Drug Use, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 02:51:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5317691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runphoebe/pseuds/runphoebe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When Kent’s name gets called first, he smiles, and when he slips the jersey over his head, he smiles, and when he realizes he’s going to be in Vegas, Las fucking Vegas, he smiles so hard his cheeks ache. Just because Jack’s a huge fucking fuck up who can’t handle being number one doesn’t mean Kent’s going to cry about it.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In which Kent doesn't even bother trying to get over Jack because he knows it's a huge waste of his time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i thought of you and where you'd gone

**Author's Note:**

> this fic comes with plenty of warnings in the end notes, so please heed them (they are spoilery but important if you think something in the tags might make you uncomfortable.) 
> 
> this is from kent parson's pov, so if jay-z is your forever girl you may not love it? it's also the closest thing i've ever written to my actual headcanon of kent parson as a character. there is an instance of kent hooking up with an omc and a teeny tiny blink and you'll miss it mention of bitty at the end, but do not misunderstand me: this is a kent/jack fic. you can interpret the ending as you wish, but in my head, they ride off happily into the sunset. 
> 
> title from 'the world spins madly on' by the weepies, which is literally the most parse/zimms song in existence. there's a line at the end that's canon inspired but divergent. there's also a line somewhat lifted from a livestream that i did not listen to but read a tumblr post on where ngozi said something about kp being the story's antagonist, which i did not love tbqh.

Kent is eighteen and he feels like everybody in this hospital waiting room knows who he is and what he’s doing here.

In reality, no one knows who Kent is and everyone knows who Jack is, and that’s fine because in a few months Kent’s going to be lighting up the NHL and right now Jack’s in a private room having his stomach pumped. Kent’s sneakers are covered in vomit and that’s fine because he has a fat rookie contract waiting for him in Edmonton and he’s gonna be able to buy new sneakers. He’s gonna be able to buy his mom a _house_. He’s gonna be able to buy as many plane tickets to visit Zimms in Vegas as he needs, just like they talked about.

Jack’s in a private room and they won’t let Kent in because he’s not _family_ and Kent can’t say _yeah, but I’m hockey and to Jack, hockey’s more important_. It’s not something you can write on a next of kin form, so it’s nothing.

Jack is in love with him. Jack is in love with his hockey in a big way. Who else is gonna sit by his bed and punch his shoulder and tell him what a monumental fuck up he is for pulling a fucking stunt like this so close to the draft? And these fuckin’ nurses are going to sit here and tell him he’s not family, like he’s not the one wearing Jack’s vomit all over his sneakers.

Fuck them.

Fuck everyone staring at him while he paces, and fuck his eyes for not holding in his tears a little better, and fuck Jack for downing a bottle of Xanax like a huge fucking baby, and fuck Kent for caring, and thinking that the sentiment was returned. Fuck the universe for sending the kid who does key bumps in the bathroom at family dinners to Vegas and the kid with vomit all over his sneakers to Edmonton.

Bad Bob shows up first, which is funny to Kent in a way because Jack just swallowed a month’s worth of anxiety meds in no small part due to his festering daddy issues.

“Kent,” Bob says, pulling him in for a hug. He’s easy with his affection, exactly like his wife and nothing like Jack, and he lets eighteen-year-old Kent, full grown and a soon-to-be millionaire, cry into his shoulder until the cotton of his shirt is soaked through.

“Kiddo, go back to the hotel,” Bob says after he speaks at length with the nurses. “Go get yourself cleaned up and get some sleep.”

“What about Jack?” Kent asks dumbly.

“Son, I don’t think Jack –,” Bob starts, and then stops to scrub a hand over his face. “You have a big day tomorrow. Get some rest. I’ll call your mom in the morning.”

“But –,”

“Do you need me to call you a cab?” Bob asks. Kent says yes, because what’s the fucking point of arguing? He peers in Jack’s room when a nurse lets Bob in and sees Jack with an IV in his arm and a tube in his throat and brand new haircut sweaty against his scalp. His feet are bare. Kent is eighteen and he has never ached for anything like this in his life.

A nurse catches him staring and shuts the door.

 

 

When Kent’s name gets called first, he smiles, and when he slips the jersey over his head, he smiles, and when he realizes he’s going to be in Vegas, Las fucking Vegas, he smiles so hard his cheeks ache. Just because Jack’s a huge fucking fuck up who can’t handle being number one doesn’t mean Kent’s going to cry about it.

*

Kent’s still eighteen and everyone in Las Vegas knows who he is and knows he isn’t supposed to be there. The Aces are a pretty new expansion with pretty old players and they were expecting Jack fucking Zimmermann to swoop in and save the day. Well. Fuck them. Jack Zimmermann is losing all his muscle mass in a hospital bed and changed his cell phone number two weeks ago. Kent is here and he’s healthy and he’s kicking ass in training camp.

He thinks Vegas probably feels like they got shafted until the first preseason game, after Kent’s beauty of a goal and three assists, which must seem like a lot on a team that spent the whole last season averaging a couple goals a night.

Kent spent the whole time in juniors on Jack’s right wing, but the Aces play him at center, which is fine with him because, honestly, who the fuck is gonna live up to Jack Zimmermann. One of the guys on his line, Roz, the youngest on the team besides Kent at twenty-three, comes up to him when the locker room is mostly empty.

“You’re fun to play with, Parse,” he says, tossing an arm over Kent’s shoulders. “Come out with us. You can buy us drinks with that fat signing bonus.”

“Sure,” Kent shrugs. He doesn’t have anywhere better to be and he hasn’t had a drink since he found Jack half dead in his hotel bathroom. He hasn’t made friends with anyone on the team yet, but they’re all cool guys and they don’t act like he’s Jack’s shitty backup or ask him questions about Jack’s cocaine problem.

Kent eyes a few hot guys as they pass his table, and he thinks one of them eyes him back and he considers what it would be like to go home with someone who isn’t Jack, to let someone else’s hands cup the curve of his ass, let them put their tongue in his mouth. It makes him vomit up the pint of beer sitting heavy in his stomach in the shitty bar bathroom and it makes him want to find whatever rehab facility Jack’s locked away in and punch him in his goddamn face until he’s bleeding and he’s bleeding and he never stops, until he feels a fraction of the devastation he’s wrought upon Kent’s life, sitting in that fucking hospital bed feeling sorry for himself like fucking up his own life is the only thing that matters.

At the end of the fucking day, Jack Zimmermann is still Jack Zimmermann, and an NHL team is still going to want him, pill problem or not, and Kent could spend the next hundred years proving himself on the ice over and over and there would still be people saying he didn’t deserve the number one spot. At the end of the day, Kent is barely eighteen and he’s already seen the love of his life not breathing on the bathroom floor.

“Parse, you good?” Roz asked, sticking his head inside the bathroom.

“I’m good,” Kent says, washing his mouth out in the sink. “Not much of a drinker.”

“Oh, kiddo,” Roz says. “We’ll teach you. Don’t worry.”

“Yeah, bet you’ve had plenty of time to practice, old man,” Kent says.

*

Jack isn’t in Vegas except for all the ways he is, sewn into Kent’s skin, beckoned every time Kent calls his disconnected number, buried deep deep deep in the bones of Kent’s body and so present in the way Kent lies awake and tries to jerk off and can’t unremember the possessive clutch of Jack’s hands around his waist.

It’s not the Jack Vegas wants and it’s not the Jack Kent wants, either.   

*

 

They’re in a little dive a couple blocks off the strip one night in December when Kent is riding a twenty-one game point streak and feeling like hot fucking shit.

“Parser, how come I never seen you take home a girl before?” Nico asks, slamming down another tequila shot in front of Kent. He takes it easily and sucks a lime wedge between his teeth, wincing at the burst of sour juice.

Kent thinks about it. It probably does look strange to them. Kent is hot and talented and young and has chicks hanging off him every time they go out. “I’m gay,” he says after a moment.

He’s never been all fucked up about it like Jack, but he’s always kept his mouth shut so he wouldn’t fuck Jack over with all that speculation about them, but now, he figures, Jack has fucked himself over all on his own and Kent can be gay in public without Jack crying about it.

“Well, fuck,” Nico says, not missing a beat. “How come I never seen you take home a guy before?”

“For fucking real, Parse,” Roz says. “It’s Vegas, not like you’ve got slim pickings.”

“Guess I’m just shy, then,” Kent says with a half-smile.

“Fuck you,” Roz says, punching his arm. “Like fuck you are.”

*

Kent had a lot of time in juniors preparing to be the number two pick, and practicing how to be okay with that, but he takes to being number one with ease. The Aces are fucking lucky to have him.

He’s eighteen and he wins the Calder.

He’s nineteen and he takes the Aces to the playoffs for the first time ever.

He’s twenty and he wins the Stanley Cup in Game 7 against the Pens and he flies down to Boston when he’s still a little drunk on a lethal mix of tequila and Bud Light and champagne. He found out from a guy who played in Rimouski that Jack’s been holing up at some shitty little school just outside Boston, barely in the ECAC and never gone to the Frozen Four, and it’s just – so fucking Jack to pull some shit like that, act all self-sacrificing and noble.

If their lives were a screenplay, Kent would be the antagonist.

He shows up in a cab because he’s too drunk and too young to rent a car and he’s faced with a nasty fucking frat house, missing shingles and rotten porch rails and some naked guy named Shitty smoking a bowl in a rocking chair.

“Hey, man,” he says, Stanley Cup snapback backward on his head and hair peeking out from underneath. “Jack Zimmermann around?”

“Yeah, think he’s – holy fuck,” the guy says. “You’re Kent fucking Parson. Congratulations, man. Sweet hatty.”

“Thanks,” Kent says back. He likes fans and he likes being reminded of how fucking good at hockey he is.

“Yo, I’m Shitty, by the way,” the guy – Shitty – says. “And Zimmermann is hiding out somewhere inside. Finals just ended and the dude still can’t relax.”

“I’m familiar with it,” Kent says dryly. He walks through the door into a house that smells like old laundry and stale beer, reeking with the stench of unwashed hockey player and has to wade through a crowd of people who are fortunately too drunk to recognize him right away before he spots Jack sitting at a table in the otherwise empty kitchen.

It’s like – Kent hasn’t ever given much credence to the idea of loving someone so much that they carry your heart around outside your chest, but it’s like Kent has spent three years without his heart and now he’s standing in this dank ass house, staring it in the face.

“Parse,” Jack says, sounding hard, confused. “How did you find me?”

Kent drops into an empty seat at the table. “News about Jack Zimmermann travels around the hockey grapevine pretty quick,” he says, mostly to see if it will make Jack squirm the way it always used to.

“Congratulations. On –,” he can’t even get the words out and just nods at the snapback Kent’s wearing. In another universe, if Jack had never ODed and Kent had gone to Edmonton and managed to win the Calder and the Cup and the Conn Smythe anyway, Jack would never have been able to be happy for him. Kent thinks vaguely that maybe love is watching this doomed fucking thing and holding onto every good piece of it like a lifeline.

Maybe love is Kent five or ten or twenty years from now still telling himself that Jack is his fucking soulmate.

“Thanks,” Kent says weirdly. “Congrats on – this.” He gestures to the house around them, to Jack’s new life in general. To this thing he’s carved out without any help from Kent and maybe Kent can show off Jack’s baby pictures and maybe Kent has Jack’s mom’s cell number in his phone, but he definitely doesn’t have Jack.

“Fuck, Parse, did you come here to mock me?” Jack asks, defensive and prickly just like Kent remembers.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Kent asks, suddenly too angry to keep it in, angry out of nowhere. Kent has spent three years not being angry at Jack. “Did you listen to the voicemails I left before you changed your number or was it easy as fucking shit to delete those, too?”

“Get the fuck out,” Jack says coldly. He’s so amazing at scraping away the pieces that make him uncomfortable, he really fucking is.

“Zimms, I’m sorry,” Kent apologizes frantically, which is also exactly as he remembers. “Seriously, just wait, just stop for a sec, I’m sorry.”

Jack looks stone-faced and angry and like he’s never loved Kent at all. Kent’s here looking his heart in the face and his heart is saying _fuck you, fuck you, fuck you_.

He stops to sign some autographs on the way out and take a few pictures. Fuck Jack and his new team, he’s still a Stanley Cup champion and he’s the best active player in the game and he’s Kent fucking Parson and maybe Jack’s pissed that he doesn’t have that, but that’s on him.

*

Kent’s twenty-one and he wins the Stanley Cup again, in Vegas this time, and he meets a Biochem undergrad from UNLV at their third bar of the night.

He’s named Nathan and he’s cute as hell and he could not give less of a shit about hockey.

“My roommate’s a big fan,” he says when he stumbles into Kent walking away from the bar, spilling a hoppy smelling beer all over the front of Kent’s shirt. “She’s got a poster of your face above her bed. She dragged me out tonight.”

“She’s got good taste, huh,” Kent says with a crooked grin. Nathan’s only sitting here because Kent had insisted on buying him another beer to make up for his spilled one, even though the collision was definitely Nathan’s fault.

“Oh, god,” Nathan says, covering his face and laughing. “Does that actually work for you? Ugh, of course it does. I bet anything works for you looking like that.”

“Nah,” Kent smirks, “I usually just spill beer all over the person I’m trying to take home.”

“Hey!” Nathan says, laughing more and jokingly indignant. “It was an accident!”

“Yeah,” Kent agrees, putting his hand on Nathan’s hip. “So, you gonna take me home, or what?”

It’s the first time he’s hit on a guy in public.

Nathan breathes out, a shocked little exhale. “I bet your place is nicer,” he said.

“I have a cat who’ll try to sleep on your face,” Kent warns.

“I have a roommate with a picture of your face on the wall,” Nathan says, and that’s definitely the trump card.

“Good point,” Kent concedes. “So, you gonna let me take you home, or what?”

Nathan bites his lip and looks up at Kent from beneath ridiculously thick eyelashes.

*

Sleeping with Nathan is good in that getting your dick wet is almost never bad and Nathan really is cute and has a great laugh and isn’t anything like the kind of boy Kent ever pictured himself with and that’s a good fucking thing.

He sucks Nathan off in the hallway, like he can’t even make it to the bedroom before he goes to his knees, and then he kisses him fiercely, dragging him to the bed and hoping patiently that he’ll return the favor. He offers, then says, “But are you sure you wouldn’t rather fuck me instead?” and Kent says nothing because his brain shorts out.

*

He spends all summer fucking Nathan because Nathan has a summer class so he stays in Vegas, and it’s a lot more fun to feel sorry for yourself when you’re feeling sorry for yourself and also getting it in on the regular. Every time he sleeps with him and doesn’t throw up from the feeling of someone else’s hands on him besides Jack’s, he gives himself a point.

Nathan seems to get that this isn’t a permanent thing for Kent and doesn’t mind, happy to have fun with Kent in the short term.

Kent only lasts a few weeks before he tells Nathan about Jack, because he can tell his teammates or the whole fucking world that he’s gay all he wants, but he can’t tell anyone about Jack. Nathan, who doesn’t know who the fuck Jack Zimmermann is or why Kent is so fucked up over him, is a good target.

“You wanna hear a story?” Kent asks one night when they’re both naked on Kent’s king bed, all white sheets and white duvet and too many pillows. He lives the most luxurious fucking life and he loves it that way.

Nathan has a smoldering joint between his fingers and he’s all lazy from the weed, brain taking a while to connect with his mouth. “Yeah, tell me a story,” he murmurs, rolling onto his belly. Kent admires the length of his spine all the way down to his ass.

“Once there was a really hot, talented hockey player who fell in love with his slightly less hot and talented center,” Kent starts, running his fingers through Nathan’s hair. He falls silent.

“That it?” Nathan asks after a minute, looking up at Kent.

“’s it,” Kent agrees.

“Ugh, that sucked. Your stories are the worst,” Nathan says. “How does it end?”

“I don’t know,” Kent admits. Maybe it end like this, with Kent sharing a joint with a cute as fuck undergrad and Jack pretending like he’s not a gay, depressed pillhead all over again.

*

He is so, so tired the first time Jack calls him since the overdose. A six game road trip, two straight nights getting double shifted like crazy, and a late flight back and he can’t even crawl under his duvet when he passes out. His phone blares at him a five fucking thirty in the morning and Kent doesn’t recognize the number so he almost doesn’t pick up, but he has to scream at somebody about the injustice of actually being awake right now.

“Why the fuck,” he mumbles into the phone and can’t finish his thought.

“Parse,” Jack says haltingly, more nervous than he ever used to be with Kent.

“Jack, what the hell,” he says, scrubbing a hand across his face. It makes him feel sick to his stomach that he called Jack one hundred and thirty seven times and Jack didn’t pick up once and Jack calls him one fucking time at five-thirty in the morning and Kent answers on the first ring.

“I didn’t think about the time difference,” Jack admits, which is classic Jack. Focused on himself.

“You’re a dumbass,” Kent groans.

“Yeah,” Jack agrees softly.

“Is this one of those twelve step things?” Kent asks suspiciously. He’s not interested in being a part of Jack Zimmermann’s rehabilitation program.

Jack snorts. “No, I just wanted –,” he cuts himself off, “I just wanted to.”

“Hey, you wanna hear a story?” Kent asks, because he can’t listen to Jack talk about calling just because he wanted to, no thank you.

“Yeah, Parse, tell me a story,” Jack says after a minute.

Kent opens his mouth to tell Jack about Roz playing his wingman last week and getting, like, five different guys’ phone numbers, and he says, “If our lives were a screenplay, I’d be the antagonist.”

They’re both silent for a long time, like they know Kent hadn’t meant to say that, and eventually Jack says, quiet and still, “You’re not my antagonist, Kenny.”

“I don’t want to be,” Kent says. “I’m really fucking tired.”

Jack says, “Get some sleep.”

*

Kent is twenty-three and he’s riding a thirty-one game point streak when they play the Bruins in mid-December. He does rent a car this time to go see Jack, a sweet little Porsche that’ll probably turn some heads, and he remembers exactly how to get to Jack’s decrepit little hockey house.

He pulls up right in front of the house and that same guy, Shitty, is sitting on the front porch with vats of suspicious looking alcohol.

“Hey, Shitty,” he says, clapping his shoulder. “Mustache looks great, man.”

He thinks Shitty really likes being remembered by Kent Parson because he smiles and offers Kent a cup of something he calls ‘tub juice’.

“No thanks,” he says. “Jack inside?”

“It’s fuckin’ EpiKegster so who knows where he’s hiding out,” Shitty says. “Probably in his room watching some documentary shit.”

Kent snorts, but he realizes quickly that Shitty’s not kidding. It’s bizarre – it’s a fucking revelation to realize that Jack’s this entire person that Kent doesn’t know and that Kent knows this entire other version of him that no one else ever will. Kent doesn’t know the Jack that hides away during parties to watch documentaries and these guys don’t know the Jack who did bumps off the back of Kent’s hand when they won the Memorial Cup and that’s okay.  

“Ask Rans and Holster if you can’t find Jack,” Shitty advises. “They’re good at sniffing him out.”

Kent doesn’t know who Rans and Holster are, but he doesn’t think he’ll need them. He’s always been pretty good at sniffing him out, too. He rejects Shitty’s final offer of tub juice and thanks him, walking inside.  

“Kent Parson!” Somebody squeaks as soon as he walks through the door.

Kent smiles graciously and signs a shit ton of autographs and gets his ass handed to him in flip cup by some chick named Lardo with the meanest chirp game he’s ever heard.

Jack’s taking a selfie with some blonde kid when Kent finds him and the game of flip cup is just enough to make Kent’s head spin a little bit, buzzing in a good way. Seeing Jack standing tall and broad and smiling makes Kent’s heart ache and ache and ache. Seeing Jack makes him want to know all the little pieces of himself that Jack has gained since Kent knew him.

He feels lucky, in this weird way, that he gets to fall in love with his soulmate all over again. How many people get to do that shit twice?

“Hey, Zimms,” he says, which he doesn’t even call Jack in his own head anymore. He’s Kent fucking Parson and he’s cool as shit and he’s not going to lose his head even more over this dumbass boy. “I really fucking missed you.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Warnings For:** recreational drug use (jack does cocaine and pills), overdosing (jack overdoses on xanax), internalized homophobia (kent references jack having problems with being gay when they were younger), very insensitive language (in his head) when kent thinks about jack's drug addiction, kent has sex (non-explicit) with an OMC, recreational (canon typical) drinking
> 
> overall, kent never falls out of love with jack and he's angry about it and resentful toward jack and jack hates kent for so many, many reasons, which makes their happy ending a little hard to come by. this pre-draft interpretation of jack is probably not increddddibly popular, because he is not great and not super nice and he does coke, which i don't think is super popular in fanon. 
> 
> come hmu on [tumblr](http://runphoebe.tumblr.com) if you're not wishing for my death after that story.


End file.
